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Miner legacy trumps salary, incentives for UTEP coach Tim Floyd

AUSTIN -- Tim Floyd, the new head basketball coach at the University of Texas at El Paso, stands to make more than half a million dollars a year.

Floyd, 56, is to receive a base salary of $250,000, but with incentives he could make at least $550,000 annually, according to an offer letter the El Paso Times obtained through the state's open-records law and interviews with university officials.

It has been a month since Floyd, who most recently was an assistant coach with the NBA's New Orleans Hornets, was hired by UTEP. A contract has yet to be worked out between Floyd and the university.

But UTEP administrators said Floyd could earn between $150,000 and $200,000 more per year than his predecessor, Tony Barbee.

Barbee received a base salary of $233,602 for 2008-09, but after incentives he made more than $400,000, according to university documents.

Barbee's pay last season was to exceed $470,000 because of performance-based incentives, officials said. The Miners qualified for the NCAA tournament in March and lost in the first round to Butler.

UTEP Executive Vice President Richard Adauto said the delay in agreeing on a contract with Floyd was because the coach has been busy relocating, hiring his staff and recruiting players.

Floyd recently announced three top recruits in Rashanti Harris, a 6-foot-8, 240-pound center from Columbus, Miss.; Michael Haynes, a 6-foot-6, 225-pound forward from Chicago; and Desmond Lee, a 6-foot-4, 180-pound guard from Norfolk, Va. He also has hired two assistant coaches and a director and assistant director of basketball operations.

Floyd said his contract was not a priority because he needed to put the program on solid footing. But, he joked, after a day of house hunting, contract negotiations would move up his list of priorities. He said home prices had shot up since he last lived in El Paso in 1986, when he was an assistant to the legendary coach Don Haskins.

"We probably need to do that pretty quick," he said of his contract. "I've been hopping on these airplanes and, my gosh, what if I go down and I don't have any insurance or any of that?"

Adauto said the university hoped to negotiate a contract with Floyd in the next 30 days.

As to the absence of a contract, "I don't think it's totally unusual, quite frankly," Adauto said. "For whatever reason in the athletics business, college anyway, you enter into some understanding upfront and then you negotiate the salary.

New UTEP head basketball coach Tim Floyd will once again coach in the Don Haskins Center. (Rudy Gutierrez/El Paso Times)

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After Floyd left El Paso 24 years ago, he built a high-profile career as head coach at Idaho, the University of New Orleans, Iowa State, the Chicago Bulls, the New Orleans Hornets and the University of Southern California. He had a second run with the Hornets as an assistant coach after resigning from USC last summer.

Floyd's return to El Paso has been celebrated by university officials and Miners' fans. But his homecoming also brings questions about his role in an ongoing NCAA investigation of USC.

NCAA officials are investigating allegations that Floyd gave $1,000 to someone associated with former USC star O.J. Mayo. Floyd maintains he did nothing wrong. He said he left USC because of lack of support.

Biggest contract

Floyd's compensation package after incentives could be the most lucrative of any basketball coach in UTEP history. Floyd, though, has held plenty of higher-paying jobs.

The Chicago Daily Herald reported that he earned $2.5 million a season as head coach of the Chicago Bulls between 1998 and 2001. Later, his stint as head coach of the New Orleans Hornets brought him $1.6 million a season, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

At the college level, he made $750,000 annually as the head coach at Iowa State, the Omaha World-Herald reported. And the Orange County Register wrote that he made more than $800,000 a year at USC.

"Certainly, there were times in my career where that meant an awful lot," Floyd said in an interview.

New UTEP head basketball coach Tim Floyd will once again coach in the Don Haskins Center. (Rudy Gutierrez/El Paso Times)

"Right now it doesn't. At this phase in my career, it's just not as big a deal. We have been very fortunate with some of the places we've been."

He said he accepted the job in El Paso because it is more of a home than any other place he has lived. And, he said, he knows how to recruit and develop the players UTEP needs.

Floyd said he chose UTEP over professional basketball because he has always enjoyed the university atmosphere, often thinking he might have been a professor if he were not a coach.

Five years ago, Floyd publicly said USC would be his last job. Now he will not speculate on how long he will stay in El Paso. He said that he loves UTEP but that his decision will depend on the support of the community. UTEP has lost several basketball coaches to higher-paying schools.

Barbee left in March for Auburn, which gave him a six-year contract worth $1.5 million annually. His base salary at UTEP was less than one-fifth that total, but Barbee received numerous incentives that doubled his pay in some years.

Documents show that between September 2009 and January he received about $110,000 in incentives. They included $30,033 for a summer basketball camp and $80,000 in salary "supplements" from the Rebounders Club, a group of basketball boosters.

Adauto said a look at Barbee's contract could give insight into the types of incentives that Floyd may be offered. Barbee received $1 of every gate ticket sold, $20 for each season ticket sold above a 4,500-ticket benchmark, and up to $5,000 for participating in postseason basketball tournaments that were sanctioned by the NCAA, provided that net revenues allowed for the bonus.

He received additional performance-based incentives, and his contract provided for two cars and a country club membership.

Tom Yeager, a former chairman of the NCAA's infractions committee, said any decision to impose penalties can follow a coach to a new university. He pointed to the case of Kelvin Sampson, the former men's basketball coach at Indiana.

In Sampson's first season with the Hoosiers in 2006-07, the NCAA restricted him from visiting and calling recruits. This was because he and his staff made 577 impermissible calls to prospective players during his previous job as the coach at Oklahoma, the NCAA said. These specific restrictions were imposed by Indiana University, a course that Yeager said is sometimes dictated by the NCAA.

Eventually, Sampson resigned from Indiana under pressure after the NCAA found that his program also made improper phone calls to recruits.

Indiana in 2008 was hit with three years of probation, and Sampson was issued a penalty that made it nearly impossible for him to coach a college basketball team for five years. He now is an assistant coach with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks.

In UTEP's case, Floyd was hired before the NCAA issued a report on its findings at USC.

Floyd said the NCAA report will bear out that he ran a clean program.

"I think I have said enough publicly," he said. "I understand that they will have a final ruling in a couple of weeks, and at the point I'll probably have much more to say."

He said the NCAA findings will have no effect on his ability to coach at UTEP.

"Absolutely not, and I think the other four schools that tried to hire me will tell you the same thing," he said.

Adauto said the NCAA does not discuss pending cases, but it said there were no prior infractions on Floyd's record. He said the pending investigation will not hold up salary negotiations and the university does not foresee the need to add a clause in the contract that would allow UTEP to terminate the deal based on the outcome of the investigation.

"When we talked to Tim, he explained to us what happened in quite some detail, and we feel totally comfortable with what went on at that time and we are not concerned at this point," Adauto said.